My (Belated) Top 5 Albums of 2012

2012 held some pleasant aural surprises, both from established and new artists. When I'm writing, I can only listen to music without words, or the lyrics start appearing on the page like some sort of mind-control conspiracy. And when I'm not writing, I like listening to all manner of things, from Johnny Cash to Frank Sinatra to EDM. Anyway, enough about preferred playlists, and on to the business at hand.

Here are my top five picks for the year just gone:

1) Of Monsters and Men - My Head is An Animal

This one smacked me upside the head. Folk pop from Iceland? Singing about furry paws, kings and lionhearts? Weird, check. Unexpected? Check. The best debut of 2012? Without a doubt. Love Nanna's lilting vocals, her call and return exchanges with Raggi, the horns and bells - basically, everything about this record. Why do we persist in glorifying miserable songs (from Nirvana, Radiohead, etc)? We need more musical joy, and with songs like Mountain Sound and Little Talks, Of Monsters and Men bring it.

2) BT - If the Stars are Eternal, So Are You and I

There are several classically trained electronic music pioneers, but none of them comes close to Mr. Brian Transeau, aka BT, for range, creativity and talent. I've been a BT fan since he released Ima in the mid 90s and defined the sound of trance. Since then he released the acclaimed score for the filmMonster and the equally cinematic This Binary Universe, a beautiful collection of sonic landscapes and electronic sound poems. IFSAESAYAI (how about that for an acronym?) is the heir to the latter, combining slowly building melodies with mournful guitar plucking and synth sweeps that Robert Moog would be proud of. This is the soundtrack to my next book.

3) Mumford and Sons - Babel (deluxe edition)

A test of a good band is how closely their live performances (vocals particularly) resemble the mastered, edited studio versions of their songs. Having driven four hours each way to see M&S in Nebraska this summer (and nearly dying after foolishly drifting off at the wheel at 2 am on the way home) and watching them on a baking hot night in Kansas City last summer, I can attest that Marcus Mumford and his band of merry banjo-plucking, bass-strumming, key-plonking men pass this assessment. The hoedown stormers (Whispers in the Dark, I Will Wait) are easy to like, but it's the depth of feeling in the slower songs (The Ghosts that We Knew, for example) that give this second LP longevity on my beloved Technics turntable. Oh, and their version of Simon & Garfunkel's The Boxer blows the original out of the water.

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My Top Books of 2012

Classics: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Complete Sherlock Holmes (Heirloom Collection)

Prompted by my appreciation of the excellent trio of Benedict Cumberbatch, Martin Freeman and Andrew Scott in Sherlock, I began to search for a one-stop gathering of Arthur Conan Doyle's stories about the detective. Several years ago, Easton Press released an elegant three-volume, leather-bound set, but my budget wouldn't stretch to that. So it was with glee that I discovered this new box set from Thomas & Mercer. The binding is solid, the illustrations whimsical and the box itself, with two Sherlock quotes ("The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes" and "It is a capital offense to theorise before you have all the evidence. It biases the judgment.") an attractive edition to any bibliophile's shelves.

Contemporary Fiction: Alan Furst, Mission to Paris

This year I went a little nuts with World War II, Cold War and Putin-era Russia novels, devouring David Downing's entire back catalogue (not literally - that'd lead to horrible indigestion), Alex Dryden's Finn series and much of John Le Carre's work. Yet the writing of Alan Furst stands alone in the genre, and Mission to Paris is his best book for at least five years. In it, actor Frederic Stahl is sent to the French capital to make a film, and is unwittingly swept up in espionage involving the Nazis, the US and his host country. Furst shows off his intimate knowledge of Paris - he lived there for several years - with evocative descriptions, and his ability to raise and lower tension at just the right time to keep you hooked until the end.

Politics - Douglas Carswell, The End of Politics
Carswell is a small-government Conservative, but it would be unwise for a prospective reader to dismiss The End of Politics as a right-leaning missive, because it isn't. In addition to his political work, Carswell is a proven writer, contributing to The Spectator, The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Times, amongst others, and composing insightful daily blog posts. In this book, he explains the chronic ailments of today's Western governments - their bloated size, their unrestrained spending and their increasing distance from the will of the electorate - and then explores how technology can help right the ship. The End of Politics is bold, witty and practical - and let's hope to goodness its author is right to be optimistic.

Read the full article on the Huffington Post's website here.